Wordless Wednesday

Christmas 2008

the break down:

Christmas Eve we spent the morning at the local mall where we spotted Santa before he took off on his big night. the rest of the day & night we spent around the house getting things ready for the next day. we went on a walk around the neighborhood looking at everyone's Christmas lights, put out the reindeer food that we made at Mayden's preschool the week before, opened gifts from the elves (Christmas Pjs & a book), read the book, told the Christmas story, watched Rudolf one final time and went to bed!

Christmas day we slept in until 8:30 (i'm pretty sure this will be the last year for that!) and awoke to discover that Santa had in fact been here! the kids were really happy to see the pile of gifts in the living room. this was the first year that Mayden really understood everything so it was very fun. my parents, sister & her fiance came over around 10. we opened more gifts & had a nice brunch. naps came and went for everyone <-- my favorite part! then the in-laws came over for a nice dinner which was mostly crock-pot made and i was very happy with the end result. we visited & opened even more gifts and then got the kids off to bed. after the kids we're all tucked in Chris and i watched Love Actually... one of our favorite modern Christmas classics. all in all it was a great day.

while Christmas was really nice i just love the day after Christmas when we can all be home alone and go thru some of the things we got the day before. it's very relaxing. the kids had a good time playing with their new toys. we got to go outside for a while too which was awesome.

below are some pictures from the last few days.

Santa

we spent this morning at the mall with our neighbor Collin & his mom. i was hoping to only take a peek at Santa however Mayden had other plans. she begged and we conceded (it is Christmas Eve after all) this picture was just too funny not to post today...

ahh the timeless tradition of torturing our children with a strange fat man dressed in red

Wordless Wednesday

Cameron's first haircut

Tuesday we all went to my sister's shop to get gussied up. after some thought we decided Cameron could probably use his first haircut. Chris was thrilled to get rid of his ever noticeable mullet, i however was a little more hesitant to cut the curls. for the longest time he's had this one precious little curl (which has since turned into a few curls) hanging out in the back. the instant those curls disappeared from his neck he seemed like such a big boy... *sob* i guess i should get use to this.





before:

just a little wiggly

my big boy hair

all done! thanks Aunt Neeka

Wordless Wednesday

a blog you should know about

Cake Wrecks is a really funny blog about cakes that don't make the grade. i can't get enough of it and it's even inspired me to bring a camera w/ me to the grocery store just in case i see a particularly wreck of a cake!

enjoy!

homemade pizza

on top of making the cookies on Saturday i also set out to make my first pizza! i think with a little tweaking this could become a weekly dinner project. making your own pizza requires surprisingly little ingredients and it was relatively easy however it wasn't as crisp as we'd probably like. the dough was super sticky. i didn't use a bread maker (i have one, but with no manual) which i believe would make the process even easier! i think i'll give the bread maker a try next time.

YUM!

cookie day

Saturday we spent most of the day inside making Christmas cookies (or so we'd hoped). first we made the gingerbread cookie dough which i've never made before. while the gingerbread dough was cooling in the fridge we made the very traditional "green Christmas tree cookies". they are a MUST for our family at this time of year and they MUST be green and MUST be in the shape of trees or they don't taste right. i grew up making these each year and fully plan on bestowing this onto my kids. turnes out i can't find my cookie press so the dough is waiting patiently in the fridge until i can borrow my moms later this week. the gingerbread boys are waiting too... i did one sheet but the dough is so sticky that i needed to wait until i got some helpful parchment paper (got it yesterday!) perhaps tonight i'll have enough energy to crank them out.

Christmas in Reverse

on Sunday Mayden and Shawn (and my dad a little bit too) were in the church Christmas play. they did so great! it's amazing how average the practices were and then they really knocked it out of the park when it was show time!! Mayden was really into this whole play thing. i swear she had most of the hand motions down after just one practice, i couldn't believe it!

below is the first song of Christmas in Reverse!

Wordless Wednesday

congratulating May on a job well done with the Christmas play

when you stop to think about it...

Christmas (in it's consumer driven form) is kinda ridiculous... we have people; mothers, fathers, kids, babies, brothers, sisters... dieing in our world DAILY! it's 100% preventable, how can we let this happen?

i made an effort to tone down our gift giving this year and decided to make a bunch of our gifts (which i will post more about after Christmas) however i bought most of the supplies from Walmart (one of the biggest human rights offenders) sooooooo needless to say next year i will try to do better. the guilt continues as i've also handed out my wish list to family members. FYI if you're still looking for gifts Etsy is a great way to support people on a homemade level.

please watch this video and adjust your lives as you see fit.

harmonica man

go elf yourself

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Wordless Wednesday

Lacy & her horse Ringo

goodbye my beloved Diet Dr. Thunder

don't you just hate it when you find out that something you love is bad for you? TV, desserts, consumerism, sugar, coffee, the lists just goes on and on but this time around i'm talking about diet sodas.... my poison of choice:

Diet Coke? nope.

Diet Pepsi? noooo.

Diet 7-up? nah.

Diet Dr. Pepper? i'll take it but my true guilty pleasure is it's generic counterpart Diet Dr. Thunder. the bubbly no calorie liquid candy. the simple crack of the opening can is enough to get my body to physically react. oh and the stuff is cheap at $2.30 a case, that's only $.20 a can!! how can you turn that down? by becoming educated, that's how. it's even worse when your accountability partner (husband) knows you know better and should stop ASAP. but i just bought 3 cases of the stuff yesterday!!

if i am truly on a mission to become a more whole person (in body, mind & spirit) as i say i am, then i need to ween the artificial sweeteners out of my life. a few months ago Chris and I gave the stuff up for about 6 weeks so it can be done. Stevia is our new friend but i just hope we don't find out some horrible truth about that stuff next month.

the breakdown seems to go like this: your body doesn't know what to do with artificial sweeteners because they aren't a natural food. for a similar reason we use butter and not margarine. however you don't want to go the route of High Fructose Corn Syrup either as that's both chemically altered AND high in calories. for more info on diet sodas watch the video below.

i know i'm going to get a nasty email from my grandparents about this one as they've been preaching this message for years!